1. The Field of the Invention
This invention relates to electrical switches and, more particularly, to novel systems and methods for dimmer switches.
2. The Background Art
Incandescent lights operate by heating a filament with electrical current until the filament glows, typically white or nearly so in many applications. Typically, lights have a rating of power consumption (e.g., wattage) and light output (e.g., lumens, candlepower, etc.). Controlling the level of light emitted by a particular unit (e.g., light bulb) may be done by controlling the current passed through the filament.
To control ambiance, mood, or the like, a user may rely on a dimmer to set the power or current delivery to a light, thus setting the amount of light output by a light or array of lights. As controllers have developed for “dimming” lights, a host of switches, underlying mechanisms, electrical circuits, and electronic logic have been brought to bear on the issue.
Such “dimmers” have traditionally been in one of two categories, comparatively expensive, and exorbitantly expensive. Dimmers at the lower end of the cost spectrum are typically still much more expensive than simple switches, often by an order of magnitude or more.
The lower end dimmers, moreover, are usually comparatively complex, involving many small and interrelated parts, both electrical and mechanical. Accordingly, durability is often poor as the weakest link fails. Each dimmer is usually isolated to its own one location, due to cost or functionality. Thus, multiple switchplates in a room often cannot host dimmers equally effective to dim lights in a room. Many dimmers are inconvenient, and may include multiple actuators that must be used for functions such as on-off versus dimming. Many cannot stay at a preset dimmed value and still actuate an on-off switch, returning to the preset position whenever turned on. Many are not easily adjusted. The designs associated with dimmers are typically unique, compared to the other switches from the same manufacturer or supplier. This uniqueness renders them uniquely unfashionable or even unsightly.
On the other hand, high-end dimmers have often become, effectively, computer-controlled power distribution systems. Virtually any logical algorithm can be programmed into a computer. Meanwhile, relays will permit low-voltage circuits, outputting signals from the logic of a computer, to be amplified to higher voltages, currents, or both. Thus, by applying enough processing and relay amplification, a household may light a dim display or a veritable stadium. However, these systems can represent a significant fraction of the cost of a building or residence.
What is needed is a dimming system that is mechanically simple, durable, electrically simple and robust, that provides a dimming function and an on-off function on a single actuator operable intuitively by a user. What is needed is a system providing all the desirable functionality of dimming and on-off switches in a mechanical system that looks and operates like every other on-off switch of its design type. In one sense, a switch is needed that does not scream out to a viewer that it is a cobbled set of switches, slides, paddles, toggles, buttons, or the like—different from every other switch in the room or the house. Also needed is a simple, economical dimmer switch that costs less than one order of magnitude more than the cost of a simple, on-off switch.
If a clean, simple, functional presentation is available for a system of switches, it would be an advance in the art to provide a dimmer switch that is visually indistinguishable from those other switches. Functionally, it would be an advance to provide such low cost and seamless appearance in a dimmer switch having very sophisticated dimming, cycling, preset levels, automatic undimming and dimming, automatic transition from an “off” state to a preset dimmed state, automatic transition dimming from an “on” state (dimmed or undimmed) to an off state, and the like.